[PATCH 0/3] explicit_bzero v5

[Florian Weimer]

On 11/15/2016 07:02 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 11/15/2016 09:46 AM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>
>> in any scenario where the arguments to explicit_bzero are visible to
>> malicious code, the adversary has already won.  Those arguments, after
>> all, are either in registers or on the stack.  If the adversary can
>> read either of those, they can already learn return addresses.
>
>
> It's possible that the adversary can read the stack but not registers,
> that the object address is already in a register but not in the stack,
> and that the call to explicit_bzero copies the address to the stack,
> making the address visible to the attacker. Perhaps something like the
> following instead?
>
> @strong{Warning:} Calling @code{explicit_bzero} may copy the
> the object's address from a register to the stack, thereby exposing
> the address to other parts of the program (e.g., another thread),
> which may defeat address space layout randomization.

I'm concerned that developers will read all these warnings and use 
memset instead (or a hand-written loop) because this appears to avoid 
all these issues.

Florian